Brendan Ryan (Labour)

Nobody in the last Government was capable of thinking in new terms. The Labour Party suggested that the country should follow the French health service model, which is the most successful in the world. The Government decided to build on our system, which was not working, so now we have a larger system that still does not work.

Fundamentally, we can afford the resources needed by the health service. Senator Tuffy spoke of the illogical idiocy of borrowing money to place it in a pension fund where its value is reducing. Special savings accounts are taking between €500 million and €600 million from the State coffers each year. I will not mention the other sources of revenue that could have been used, but which are being wasted elsewhere. This country does not have a financial crisis, it has a political crisis caused by a Government transfixed by its own obsession with cutting tax. It does not know what to do as it has never thought about what will happen. Its fundamental strategy is challenged and it is now running around bewildered.

The model is there, all over much maligned Europe – I am reminded of the Tánaiste's famous reference to Boston and Berlin. It exists in Germany, the Netherlands, Scandinavia and France; they all have decent health services. Only rich Ireland, richer than any of them, thinks it cannot afford to give its people a decent health service. The fundamental problem is that the Government is convinced that we cannot afford to do it. As a person of the European social democratic tradition, I know that we can do it, but the lack of political will is the problem.

I cannot finish without pointing out the gobbledygook thrown out by the Department of Health and Children. The Minister stated, concerning the drugs payment scheme, that "the cost of the scheme had risen by 73%, up from €51.34 million for the last six months of 1999 to €177.6 million for 2001." It is a wonderful trick in statistical manipulation to quote the expenditure for half a year and then compare it to the expenditure for a whole year, bedazzling people with figures. It represents a 70% increase year on year.